Menu

The Kiwi Report

After nearly 30 hours of traveling, finally arriving in Wellington, New Zealand!

I’ve spent the entire week trying to recover from jet lag from my 30 hour journey back from New Zealand. Twice this week I have watched the sunrise. Between the long flights, long layovers, and of course the time difference, I have been struggling to get back on a normal schedule. But it was all worth it because I got to spend in a week in New Zealand playing a small part in the fight for Pompe patients’ right to receive enzyme replacement therapy (ERT).

In New Zealand they have a government run department called PHARMAC. Since New Zealanders are “entitled” to “free” health care it is important to keep the costs down so treatment is available to most of the people. There are 4 million people living in New Zealand and 5 of them are currently dying from Pompe Disease, even though there is an effective treatment available – ERT. PHARMAC feels this treatment is too expensive, so the Pompe Kiwis go without. Applications made by patients and doctors for the approval of ERT have been denied with PHARMAC stating that although patients would probably benefit from the treatment, the price is just too high.

However, I believe the public feedback PHARMAC received from stating the price was too high forced them to retreat and bring the question of efficiency to the table. The ugly public backlash and slew of angry letters has mysteriously gotten PHARMAC to now say they are not sure how effective the treatment really is, that there is not enough evidence proving it does any good. They are now saying that what improvement may be experienced, is just not enough to justify the cost. I feel they know this treatment works, but had to bring cost back into play to justify denying this treatment to the patients, as placing the sole reason for denying treatment on the cost proved to be very detrimental to PHARMAC and the government – in an election year.

With a member of the New Zealand press in front of Parliament's famous Beehive building.

I was asked to join Lysosomal Diseases New Zealand’s (LDNZ) campaign to try to once again get funding for ERT approved. The day after I arrived I met up with some folks from the LDNZ, the Muscular Dystrophy Association, and 3 of the local Pompe patients. We headed up to Parliament where we met up with a journalist from Radio NZ. We passed through security and approached the reception desk. John, from the LDNZ put in a request to meet with Prime Minister John Key. During his last campaign, John Key, had promised to make orphan drugs accessible to New Zealand patients. That hasn’t happened and he is on the eve of another election, so it seemed like a great time to ask him about this seemingly forgotten campaign promise. We knew the Prime Minister was not in the building because he was attending a funeral elsewhere. It was our hope that a member of his staff would meet with us. The receptionist told us that a member of the Prime Minister’s staff would be down to meet with us shortly. We waited in the lobby and the reporter from Radio NZ interviewed us individually. Note: she kept her recorder running the whole time and captured everything, including the receptionist confirming with the Prime Minister’s office that someone would be down to meet with us. After waiting about 20 minutes or so, a security officer came over to speak to us. He informed us that no one from the Prime Minister’s office was coming to meet with us and that we had to leave. What? We were not causing a scene and this was a public building…oh, and we were just told that someone was coming to meet with us. The security officer was adamant that no one was meeting with us, and that we had to leave immediately. It became a sort of stand off between us and the young security guard. We were in a public building and we did have an appointment in a few hours with a member if the opposition party, Grant Robertson. The security officer then made some phone calls and came back to tell us that Grant would see us right away. We were escorted out of the Beehive lobby and into the adjoining building where Grant met with us.

Grant is the MP for Wellington Central, Spokesperson for Health and Associate Spokesperson for Arts, Culture & Heritage. Grant listened to us as we relayed the mornings events and he apologized for how we were treated by the Prime Minister’s office. He was very interested in hearing how I had benefited from the treatment, how it was administered, and how much trouble I had getting my insurance to cover it. I told him how over 50 other countries have found a way to make this treatment available to patients. Grant encouraged us to continue to try and get in with the PM’s staff, specifically his Health Advisor. If Grant’s party were to win in the election, he would most likely become the new Health Minister, replacing Tony Ryall. He confirmed our theory that Tony Ryall couldn’t really do anything about the matter, that change would have to come from either PHARMAC or the Prime Minister as the Health Minister is bound by legislation that doesn’t give him the power needed to approve this treatment.

Radio NZ aired the piece about us getting turned away at Parliament on their noon broadcast. This immediately got us more media attention. The next day we met with producers from two television stations. They filmed us outside the Parliament building which brought on the attention of several security guards, but no one asked us to leave. They interviewed each of us, and again a special interest was taken in how well the treatment is working for me.

That afternoon LDNZ and the New Zealand patients hit the phones and started talking to their local media contacts about the situation. I called PHARMAC and tried to secure an appointment with their Medical Director. After talking to several people in his office, his assistant called Jenny from LDNZ back and said he would be willing to meet with me – but that they are aware of what we are doing with the media and we are not to allow the media to follow us. We agreed and the meeting was set up for the next morning.

Jenny and I arrived at PHARMAC several minutes before our meeting and waited. I was armed with my own medical data as well as data from two other Pompe patients who are being treated with ERT. The data showed stabilization and improvement of our respiratory functions. I also printed out a copy of the LOTS study.* Despite several warnings from others who had encounters with him, PHARMAC’s Medical Director Peter Moodie was very personable to us. Jenny was very surprised. I detailed how poor my health was and how fast I was dying before treatment and how much my condition has improved with treatment. Even he said my improvement was remarkable. I gave him my test results along with those of the two other patients which he showed a great deal of interest in. I stressed that this treatment needs to be approved for the New Zealand patients as soon as possibly, because they will just continue to decline and ultimately die of Pompe Disease without it. He asked if I had known about any problems in America with getting insurance to approve it, I told him that sometimes the insurance company would just need a little persuading from the prescribing doctor. For the most part, American patients can get access to the treatment. He asked if anyone was monitoring my progress as part of a long term study – yes, Dr. Byrne and the University of Florida will study me for the next 5 years at the very least. I told him that the New Zealand patients cannot afford to wait for these long term studies, that the long term studies in mass don’t exist, “I am the long term study.” He tried to express his understanding, but that he had a responsibility to all the people of New Zealand. Basically, he couldn’t blow PHARMAC’s budget for just a few people. It made it sound like Allyson, Frieda, Dean, and Laurie were just casualties of war. I told him that he better figure out how to fund treatments for rare diseases because more will be coming to market and it is inexcusable for the government to continue sentencing their people to death over a price tag. He thanked me for my time and for sharing my story with him. He invited me to send whatever data I could gather to him to help prove that ERT is effective. When I arrived back home, I sent him another publication sent to me by Dr. Byrne along with a couple of letters supporting the benefits of ERT from two doctors in England. PHARMAC only responds to data, and unfortunately there is not a whole lot out there, but I know that is not the real issue – the real issue is cost.

With all the money they spent on Happy Feet the penguin and not to mention the Rugby World Cup – don’t cry broke with me then go on a shopping spree with tax payer money, only to refuse to spend tax payer money to save the lives of those tax payers. It became very clear during the course of this meeting that PHARMAC’s model is not set up to process high cost treatments for rare diseases. They do an excellent job at keeping the cost of drugs down for the masses, such an excellent job that other countries are looking to copy their model.

What needs to happen is either the Prime Minister needs to overrule PHARMAC’s decision to decline ERT, like he did with Herceptin (the breast cancer drug) or a new department needs to be set up to deal with treatments like this.

So where do we go from here? We will continue to play PHARMAC’s game and supply them with the data as it becomes available. LDNZ will ride the media wave we started and continue their campaign in the media and with Parliament, using the election to put pressure on the Prime Minister‘s office. Angry letters to PHARMAC and the Health Minister will be useless as neither can approve funding under the current model. Plus, PHARMAC is only set up to make decisions using data. I took 26 letters from the patient community supporting ERT and it was like I was offering to put hieroglyphics in front of these people. They don’t understand hieroglyphics, they only understand data. A new department for handling this type of situation needs to be formed, this is also within the Prime Minister’s power – and quite frankly, his responsibility to the people he represents as this was a campaign promise. If the Prime Minister continues to ignore his own campaign promise, then we need to take the long way around – the slow and steady route of getting a new department formed by way of a Member of Parliament, (like Grant, for example) sponsoring a piece of legislation and having the other Members vote on it.

I will gather all the media links from my trip and post it in one spot. I will also write up an entry on the non-business related activities I enjoyed while in New Zealand, you know the fun touristy stuff!

Hi there! I have not had any reactions to the infusions, not even a reaction at the infusion site. I’ve been receiving them every other week since March of 2010. I don’t take pre-meds either. Meaning, I don’t take preventative allergy meds before my infusions like Benadryl or anything like that. A lot of patients do take pre-meds and lot don’t. It is something to discuss with your doctor. Some doctors insist on it, and some patients need to be put on them after having a mild reaction. The pre-meds will most likely make you sleepy so if you go that route I suggest you have someone drive you home from your infusion. They will monitor you like crazy for reactions, especially in the beginning and react very quickly should something happen. Even if you do have a reaction, depending on how severe or mild it is, you may be able to continue with treatment with pre-meds and slowing down your rate of infusion. Concern of a reaction is very common when starting down this path. Most people do just fine with our without pre-meds. Hopefully, you’ll be like me and it will be easy breezy. I wish you the best of luck. Please let me know how it goes!